Tonight's TV
Water bored
Flood (ITV1, 9pm); Shrink Rap (More 4, 10pm);
Am I Normal? (BBC2, 10pm)
MAY day, may day. Help, we're
fighting a losing battle against
something big and nasty heading
towards us that's threatening
to overwhelm us - a four-hour,
cut price British disaster movie.
We really should leave this sort of thing to
the Americans. They do it so much better.
"This storm is unreal," notes an observer
with uncanny accuracy as Wick, Scotland, is
deluged by a giant wave.
I know this is Wick, Scotland, because the
caption tells me. This is one of those films
that feels the need to flash the time and place
on screen every few minutes.
Several important actors are in charge of
evacuating London when a water surge combined
with a high tide threatens to breach the
Thames Barrier and put the capital under
water. David Suchet looks worried as the
Deputy Prime Minister, who's in charge while
the PM's in Australia. Joanne Whalley is the
Commissioner. Of police, I assume. She doesn't
get a caption telling us exactly who.
Robert Carlyle - usually so good at accents
but here sounding very odd - is the marine
engineer forced to team up with his ex-wife
(Jessalyne Gilsig) and the father he hasn't
spoken to for years (Tom Courtenary) to save
London from a drenching.
They couldn't save me from getting bored.
By 3.21pm "it's heading straight for us" and
Commissioner Whalley is in organisational
mode. "Give me updates every ten minutes
and I need to know what's happening on the
roads," she barks.
If she looked out the window she'd find out
soon enough - it's wet, wet, wet. Rather like
this drama.
Hollywood legend Tony Curtis climbs on
the clinical psychologist's chair in Shrink
Rap to tell us "what makes him such an extraordinary
survivor".
His candid recollections includes stories of
a mother who beat him, a brother who died
when Curtis was 12 (and whose body had to
be identified by the young Tony), being Jewish,
and his relationship with Marilyn Monroe
("we taught each other what it was like
to be a man and a woman").
Four failed marriages, drug and alcohol
abuse and a serious illness in his 80s that
robbed him of the use of his legs can't help
but make this gripping viewing.
He knows how to put on a good show, telling
us that he's had a wonderful life but is "still
GOING UNDER: London faces a disaster as the Thames Barrier is breached in Flood
I SPY: Josie Lawrence in
Hapgood
screwed up and fighting my demons".
If only his interrogator wasn't the deeply
irritating Dr Pamela Connolly, or Pamela
Stephenson as she was in a previous life.
From her opening "how are you?" to her
final "you are a very remarkable man", she
exudes a condescending couchside manner.
By contrast, Dr Tanya Byron is a clinical
psychologist that I can like and trust. Am I
Normal? finds her investigating sex. She
takes a hands-on approach, so to speak.
She goes to a men's public convenience to
hear about cottaging - that's gay sex with
strangers in toilets - but fails to see the attraction,
asking, "What is sexually arousing
standing in a place that smells of piss with
someone you don't know?".
It is, Tim tells her, where his sex life
began. He was on his way to the Bronte parsonage
when he visited the public toilets in
Bradford where a gap in a cubicle wall offered
him his first gay experience. Not quite
what most people mean by the hole in the
wall.
Next, Dr Tanya goes dogging. That's
watching couples have sex in public places.
She thought it only happened in car parks
on a drizzly night and is surprised to be
taken dogging on a bright Wednesday afternoon
not far from where she lives.
She wonders if sex becomes abnormal
once you do it in a public place. Or perhaps
that's perfectly acceptable if everyone consents
(and doesn't frighten the horses).
Cruising and dogging may well be healthier
than beauty pageants for children. These
make Dr Tanya uncomfortable. You can see
why as young girls put on make-up, glamorous
frocks and mimic adult flirtatiousness.
She also meets a woman who prefers
chocolate to sex, although it is possible to
have both as long as you don't try to eat a
bar of fruit and nut during oral sex.
10:25am Monday 5th May 2008
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